Ode to the Artichoke - Pablo Neruda

The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable,
By its side
The crazy vegetables
Uncurled
Their tendrills and leaf-crowns,
Throbbing bulbs,
In the sub-soil
The carrot
With its red mustaches
Was sleeping,
The grapevine
Hung out to dry its branches
Through which the wine will rise,
The cabbage
Dedicated itself
To trying on skirts,
The oregano
To perfuming the world,
And the sweet
Artichoke
There in the garden,
Dressed like a warrior,
Burnished
Like a proud
Pomegrante.

And one day
Side by side
In big wicker baskets
Walking through the market
To realize their dream
The artichoke army
In formation.
Never was it so military
Like on parade.
The men
In their white shirts
Among the vegetables
Were
The Marshals
Of the artichokes
Lines in close order
Command voices,
And the bang
Of a falling box.

But
Then
Maria
Comes
With her basket
She chooses
An artichoke,
She's not afraid of it.
She examines it, she observes it
Up against the light like it was an egg,
She buys it,
She mixes it up
In her handbag
With a pair of shoes
With a cabbage head and a
Bottle
Of vinegar
Until
She enters the kitchen
And submerges it in a pot.

Thus ends
In peace
This career
Of the armed vegetable
Which is called an artichoke,
Then
Scale by scale,
We strip off
The delicacy
And eat
The peaceful mush
Of its green heart.

Black Stone Lying on a White Stone - César Vallejo

I will die in Paris, on a rainy day,
on some day I can already remember.
I will die in Paris--and I don't step aside--
perhaps on a Thursday, as today is Thursday, in autumn.

It will be a Thursday, because today, Thursday, setting down
these lines, I have put my upper arm bones on
wrong, and never so much as today have I found myself
with all the road ahead of me, alone.

César Vallejo is dead. Everyone beat him
although he never does anything to them;
they beat him hard with a stick and hard also

with a rope. These are the witnesses:
the Thursdays, and the bones of my arms,
the solitude, and the rain, and the roads. . .

Toast - Leonard Nathan

There was a woman in Ithaca
who cried softly all night
in the next room and helpless
I fell in love with her under the blanket
of snow that settled on all the roofs
of the town, filling up
every dark depression.

Next morning
in the motel coffee shop
I studied all the made-up faces
of women. Was it the middle-aged blonde
who kidded the waitress
or the young brunette lifting
her cup like a toast?

Love, whoever you are,
your courage was my companion
for many cold towns
after the betrayal of Ithaca,
and when I order coffee
in a strange place, still
I say, lifting, this is for you.

Two Guitars - Victor Hernandez Cruz

Two guitars were left in a room all alone

They sat on different corners of the parlor

In this solitude they started talking to each other

My strings are tight and full of tears

The man who plays me has no heart

I have seen it leave out of his mouth

I have seen it melt out of his eyes

It dives into the pores of the earth

When they squeeze me tight I bring

Down the angels who live off the chorus

The trios singing loosen organs

With melodious screwdrivers

Sentiment comes off the hinges

Because a song is a mountain put into

Words and landscape is the feeling that

Enters something so big in the harmony

We are always in danger of blowing up

With passion

The other guitar:

In 1944 New York

When the Trio Los Panchos started

With Mexican & Puerto Rican birds

I am the one that one of them held

Tight like a woman

Their throats gardenia gardens

An airport for dreams

I've been in theaters and cabarets

I played in an apartment on 102nd street

After a baptism pregnant with women

The men flirted and were offered

Chicken soup

Echoes came out of hallways as if from caves

Someone is opening the door now

The two guitars hushed and there was a

Resonance in the air like what is left by

The last chord of a bolero.

Dog Music - Paul Zimmer

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.

My big dog sang with me so purely,

puckering her ruffled lips into an O,

beginning with small, swallowing sounds

like Coltrane musing, then rising to power

and resonance, gulping air to continue—

her passion and sense of flawless form—

singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.

We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"

"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."

She was a great master and died young,

leaving me with unrelieved grief,

her talents known to only a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing,

but listens with discernment, requiring

skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.

I sing her name and words of love

andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.

Sometimes she is so moved she turns

to place a paw across her snout,

closes her eyes, sighing like a girl

I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.

The true strains rise only from

the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,

these melodies best when the moon is up,

listeners and singers together or

apart, beyond friendship and anger,

far from any human imposter—

ballads of long nights lifting

to starlight, songs of bones, turds,

conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,

things settled long before our birth.

Street Moths - X.J. Kennedy

Mature enough to smoke but not to drink,
Grown boys at night before the games arcade
Wearing tattoos that wash off in the sink
Accelerate vain efforts to get laid.

Parading in formation past them, short
Skirts and tight jeans pretending not to see
This pack of starving wolves who pay them court
Turn noses up at cries of agony-

Baby, let's do it! Each suggestion falls
Dead to the gutter to be swept aside
Like some presumptuous bug that hits brick walls,
Rating a mere Get lost and death-ray eyes.

Still, they keep launching blundering campaigns,
Trying their wings once more in hopeless flight:
Blind moths against the wires of window screens.
Anything. Anything for a fix of light.

somewhere i have never travelled - e.e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands